


Jingle

by Chacat



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:48:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chacat/pseuds/Chacat





	Jingle

Why is falling asleep so hard?

I came in to work at half past eight today, and I left at around the same time. I'm tired. I know I'm tired. Sitting here and writing this I can feel the sag in my features, the slowness in my thoughts. Every part of me knows that I should, really should, go to bed. They just don't want to. I don't blame them.

I don't want to go to bed myself. I want to sleep, that definitely, but I don't want to lie in bed with my thoughts. I don't want to...

What don't I want to? It makes no sense! I yearn for that feeling you get in the mornings, when you've woken up by your alarm clock but allow yourself to get just half an hour more sleep before you get up. The feeling of your consciousness still being in the realm of dreams and having to climb out to turn off the alarm, and then let go once more and let gravity pull you back into that world.

I can't feel that world at all right now. I'm standing in the right spot, I can see where the gate is supposed to be, but it's sealed. When I tell people how it feels, they say I should just lie down and relax and it'll come by itself. How can I explain that it doesn't? It's not a route I've never walked: I know the road to the Dreamlands, but the way is Closed. Lying down at the gate will not make it open sooner.

Lying down at the gate is about the worst thing I can do in times like this. The Dreamlands have many gates, but you don't choose which one you come to, and the ones that have to be kept closed are not at the dreams of sunshine and joy.

My window is open, and I can hear a faint jingle from outside. I can always hear it on windy days. I can hear a light scratching, too, like of a hard drive. I know it isn't my computer's hard drive, since I can hear it even when I turn my computer off and try to sleep. A scratching sound and a jingle, both quiet enough that I can almost believe I'm imagining them. No, there's the jingle again.

I can picture the source of the jingle very well. I've never seen it, I'm still not sure it exists, but I'm sure it's one of those contraptions made out of a multitude of cylinders that gently hit each other when they come into motion. It wouldn't be very big, the pitch is too high for that. Just a few cylinders, maybe three, hanging by someone else's window. Maybe the owner believes that they can keep out evil spirits, or maybe they actually like the sound.

It's slowly driving me insane.

Sometimes, I imagine climbing out of my window and somehow getting to the other windows on this side of the flat. I would peer in and check: are these people responsible for that terrible jingle? No? Well, then maybe the next ones... They have to be somewhere, don't they? Can you hear the jingling? I can't always hear it, that's why I need to peer in and check. Not these, either, but there, I can hear it again!

The fantasy of finding it is different. It's not part of the fantasy of looking for it---looking is looking and finding is finding. There's no smooth transition, no "aha!" moment when I realise that I'm at the right window. When I imagine finding it, I'm there already, hanging on the window ledge while the cylinders hang just inside the room, exactly as I imagined them. I knew I was right about them. And there, they jingle! You can hear it too now, you have to hear it too. I reach out with my hand and cut the rope holding them up.

There's no sequencing to what follows. I move, I'm not by the window now, I'm running over the wall like a spider, until I'm safely in a nook. At the same time, they fall, they fall, they fall, they fall. They're connected together, they're hanging not two metres high, but they are still jingling and falling and in my mind they come down to the ground with a crash, and all the while I'm running to my nook, and they are falling, and they come down to the ground with a crash, with a crash, with a crash.

A woman opens a door and looks in surprise. I can't see this. I don't know anything else about what happens. I can feel a continuation growing out of that line of thought, a boyfriend appears out of somewhere, but I don't want to go down that path. They come down to the ground with a crash, while I run away. The woman looks out the window but she can't see me. It's over. It's over, except I can still hear the jingle, the jingle, the jingle never stopped. The cylinders fell, all the while jingling, and then they came down to the ground with a crash, and the woman...

Can't she hear the jingling? Why is it day for her when it is the middle of the night for me?

I can hear the jingling. Can you? I don't know where it's coming from. How can I hear it, when I cut it down? And how could I have cut it down, if I didn't hear the clang? It came down with a clang, I told you that, didn't I? Maybe my sense of time just isn't right. Maybe I'm confused and I thought I cut it down, but that's only in the future for now.

Maybe I climbed around and stared into windows after I cut it down, not before. It would make sense for me to first cut down the wards and then to look for prey. But no, that makes no sense at all. If the wards were cut down already, why would I not climb inside? And besides, when I turn from my screen and look out the window, I can see the pinpricks of eight red eyes staring back at me. No, I imagined everything in the right order. The jingling is still there, I'm climbing around looking for it, and then I'll cut it down with a crash, crash, crash, crash...

CRASH.

And then I'll go back to that human that had seen me and I'll eat him.


End file.
